Well, this was not a fun project to do, but it's far less fun than it would be to live in the type of world these people want, so if exposing these people serves the cause of liberty, I'm glad I was able to pull this off.

I arrived in New York on Friday the 16th, and checked into a cheap hostel near Central Park West. My room was no frills, just a small private room with a white light bulb and a rickety bed with a cheap mattress. It was perfect.

I spent all day Saturday learning how to use my new surveillance equipment. It's not easy. Normally you have a team working together, one person with the camera, and at least one other person monitoring and recording the transmission. Since I had to do it all myself, it took a little bit of practice, but soon I got to the point that I could change batteries and reconnect wires without even looking.

My camera was a little black cube. My first idea was to embed it in some satanic looking shirt I bought for the weekend, but it was just too visible. I finally came up with a solution, I cut a hole in my sunglasses case and put that halfway in my jacket pocket. If someone really looked at it you could see a little glass pinhole, but it was an acceptable risk. In my old high school backpack was a Micro VCR and the wireless transmitter. In my shirt pocket I had a Digital Audio Recorder. Each piece of equipment has its own battery, and they burn through the batteries fast, so I really had my hands full just making sure I was still recording.

I had no idea if my camera was totally invisible, or if the second I walked up to the registration table I was going to be caught. Since looking alienated and shifty-eyed is actually pretty normal at this type of event, I was able to be a loner without looking out of place. Also I didn't shave or shampoo my hair for a few days leading into it, so I looked like the prototype hard-core Commie.

Once I settled into the opening speeches I began to relax a little. The only time I got nervous was during the classroom workshop. You'll see in one of the first cutaway shots there's a guy sitting to my left who was staring at me the whole time. I don't know if he was suspicious, or he recognized me, or what his deal was, but that entire classroom scene I was just bracing myself for him to stand up and yell "What's in your bag?" I was completely trapped back there, but had I been exposed, I would have just charged for the door and if anyone was in my way, I would have gone through them. Fortunately that situation never arose.

It felt really good once I was done with this den of demons, and I'm just glad that the mission was successful.

Some of you wished I had spoken up more, but this really wasn't the place for it. I did occasionally speak like a socialist to fit in, but it's really not my nature to be an actor and I didn't enjoy hearing those words come out of my lips, so I excised them from the video. I promise though, for our next project, the feature-length documentary Storming the Ivory Towers, Kfir and I will be talking a lot, guaranteed. But for this, I just wanted to hide in the shadows, get my footage, and get the hell out of there.

International A.N.S.W.E.R. Strategy Conference
New York City, May 17-18, 2003

"Good morning. Welcome back to day two of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, national organizing conference against war, colonial occupation, and imperialism.

Do they ever have a problem with all the Communist war, occupation, and imperialism of the last century? Oh yeah I forgot, they're only anti-freedom, not anti-'imperialism'.

Those of us here in this room are the most important people in the United States today.

Those of us here in this room are the most delusional people in the United States today.

We are the people who will build a permanent, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, movement here in the heart of the empire. We are the ones who will build a true solidarity movement with the people who are struggling for self-determination and civil liberties.

The only people struggling for self-determination and civil liberties are the unlucky souls trapped in the Muslim and socialist despotisms that you are obsessed with preserving and defending, you hypocrites.

We have traveled from all over the country, some of us thousands of miles, to stand here and analyze where we are as a movement and where we need to go to build a stronger movement to stand shoulder to shoulder with our sisters and brothers who are on the front lines with the struggle against empire.

Funny how they choose to convene in the country they most despise, the epicenter of capitalism no less. I guess they need the creature and material comforts of America so they can better devote themselves to the plight of the masses. Just like Hillary needs her mansion while she wants the rest of us to pay, pay, pay for her socialist schemes, or the pigs in Animal Farm need all the apples and milk so they could run the farm better, strictly for the good of their subjects, of course. Dictators always live like kings while they demand sacrifice and duty from the rest of us.

Okay. So let's get started on the portion of the agenda where we all get a chance to talk, and I would like to appeal to my fellow European American males to not be the first ones to shoot your hands up or to get up on the floor, but to give everyone else a chance to speak first and try not to dominate the discussion.

It's incredible how obsessed they are with group-think. Everything is about race and sex with these people, they are collectivists to the core.

Okay. So let's get started as quickly as we can so we have as much time to discuss things as possible. Thank you.

This girl, Sarah Friedman, with her shaved head and militaristic garb, was an obvious lesbian. She wore all black except for a red Communist star on her chest. Underneath all that lurked a pretty face, and I just sat there looking at her, wondering, what the hell happened to you? Her poor parents.

First off I'd like to explain a little more about the purpose of this discussion group.

Especially in the last year, through our efforts we have been able to create in the United States, and in coordination with the anti-war organizations around the world, a global movement. The good part about what has happened in the last year is that people are listening to each other around the world. When we called for October 26th, a national action democracy weekend in San Francisco, people were happy and excited that there was an initial presence in the U.S. for mass globalization and many groups in many countries decided to coordinate with us.

WOMAN:
. . . the next step in a longer process initiated by the ultra right-wing foreign policy team in the White House and the Pentagon who seek to overthrow the Cuban government and return Cuba to a state of colonialism. The global anti-war movement that now exists in all countries can, through its united actions, strengthen solidarity with the Cuban people at this critical hour. We encourage people to consider federal buildings and other central locations for demonstrations in your city or town.

The only thing critical about this hour is that your warped leftist religion has been completely discredited by world events, and your rickety moral foundation is starting to spring some leaks. It must have been such a disappointment for you that Operation Iraqi Freedom went so well. And I'll tell you this, all the Iraqis who have been released from the torture chambers and dungeons are thanking their maker for American 'colonialism'.

YOUNG GUY:
The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition congratulates the local Philadelphia organizations who have come together to issue a call for thousands of people to join in a national march on July 4th in Philadelphia protesting U.S. wars at home and abroad. The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition urges its organizing centers and all people of conscience to be in the streets of Philadelphia . In addition to the July 4th national protest, a number of groups are sponsoring local and regional protests on that weekend.

I guess it's apropos that on the day we celebrate our independence, these leftists are mobilizing to return us to a state of dependence, where all our rights are stripped away so that a central committee, comprised of their ilk, will have all the power. You see, in a society based on justice, on merit, on character, these people are impotent. Thus, they want a society based on pull and connections and power, the only type of society where they have a chance. That's why they seek ever increased expansion of the State; that's the only way they have control or influence, by force.

OLD WOMAN:
September 27th, internationally coordinated day of action against occupation and empire and in solidarity with those who resist. From Palestine to Iraq to the Philippines to Cuba, and everywhere. September 27th, which is my daughter's birthday . . .

[laughter -- "That's a coincidence."]

. . . .is the third anniversary of the beginning of the second Intifada of the Palestinian people whose resistance against colonial occupation in the past decades has been the very center of the anti-colonial struggle throughout the Middle East. This will be an global action of solidarity with all of those who are resisting empire.

I read a lot of Noam Chomsky before I went to this conference, and I can almost see how someone, not knowing any better, can be seduced into thinking that the American military-industrial complex is the biggest threat to the world. But what baffles me is the hatred these people have for Israel.

Israel is a tiny liberal democracy surrounded by a sea of fascist, totalitarian, Islamic dictatorships, where women are property (teenage girls are raped and then executed for 'adultery'), minorities have zero rights, and an oligarchy controls all the wealth and uses theology as a cloak to enslave their people, keeping them uneducated and in poverty, and these leftists are bosom buddies with these societies, yet froth at the mouth with hatred for Israel. Israel has .0016 the amount of land that the Arab nations have, and have had to defend themselves against four aggressive imperialist wars by the Soviet-armed Arab nations, and yet Israel is the colonialist imperialist power. It's this issue most of all that demonstrates that there is something very evil going on with these people.

BRIAN (One of the top A.N.S.W.E.R. officials):
So the action plan shouldn't be viewed as just a series of demos; like here's a demo, here's another demo, here's one issue, here's another issue. It's the concept of peoples' power, it's the concept of grassroots organizing. And there may be many demonstrations and this may not even be the key to it. July 4th is not going to be the key because it's right before. If there's a crisis in Korea or this thing with Cuba heats up and there's some sort of military confrontation, just as we did with Iraq, we'll switch, we'll shift over and focus on that global, globally-central issue.

If ever a country is hell on earth, it is North Korea. Millions have died of starvation (and millions more but for the food and charity donated by America), it is a sick, twisted Stalinist atheistic nightmare run by a regime of the most malevolent criminals on the planet, and these leftists defend it. I think it would be great justice for these A.N.S.W.E.R. people to go live in their socialist utopia for a few years, take some tours of the labor camps and the torture racks, and then see how much they like it, when their theories are put into practice. Of course it's all America's fault, but you have to go get a PhD at an Ivy League university to understand why -- it's very, very complicated.

MAN:
We really should focus not just on the war and occupation which should be our main thing because it's act now to stop war, but the flip side of that is instead of that, let's fund human needs! And I think that should be stressed more at our next big rally in Philadelphia or wherever.

How does destroying liberty help fund 'human needs'? Even when it comes to providing basic subsistence socialism is a failure. And you know what, I think I'll take my world of Starbucks, Microsoft, shopping malls and annoying Internet pop-up ads over your world where ten families live in a room and we stand in line all day for a piece of bread.

What's most astounding of all is that we're still having this debate. The socialist record is a hundred million dead, nothing but police states and concentration camps, and we're still debating this. Unbelievable how stupid human beings can be.

ARAB MAN:
So maybe we need to marry the concept of discrediting the election with the concept of educating people about where the real power lies. It's in the streets and people mobilizing, as an alternative instead of backing candidates, do a power-to-the-people campaign where we run the people, the masses as the candidate, so that the people take charge.

Sorry, but America isn't about letting the majority plunder from the minority, that's called theft. You see, there's this concept called 'rights', that every human being is endowed with them by the Creator, so the masses can't just run roughshod over people because they want something that they don't have. But I know the concept of rights doesn't compute with these people, who can only think in terms of group-think and mob rule.

OLD MAN:
I hate to point out that the Constitution itself sucks; there's a lot wrong with it. There's no right to healthcare, no right to education, no right to jobs, none of that is in there. Racism, anti-gay bigotry, none of that is outlawed by the Constitution. Those are the things that need to be in a real peoples' constitution. It's important to point out because we keep defending the Constitution, but it's a Constitution that's extremely weak and does not represent what people need. And when we defend the Constitution we have to go one step further and say "this is what a real constitution should look like."

I love it when we get the rare leftist who drops all the pretenses and is upfront about their true beliefs, like the guy in our Crashing the Protests video who said he likes North Korea. Groups like the ACLU help maintain this facade that the left cares about the Constitution, but in reality they are destroying it as diligently as they can.

Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU and its leader for 30 years, wrote for Soviet Russia Today (September 1934), "When the power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatsoever. . . . The class struggle is the central conflict of the world, all others are coincidental." and in the Harvard reunion book on the occasion of the 30th anniversary reunion of his class of 1905 (1935), "I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produced the wealth: communism is the goal."

The leftists say that the Constitution is a "living, breathing document", which renders it meaningless. Note how they want campaign finance laws that will make it a crime for any independent organization to run issue ads, the very heart of the First Amendment. Kids who express conservative speech on college campuses are forced to take leftist re-education 'sensitivity' seminars. They think only the State should posses guns, for they know all too well that an armed citizenry is the ultimate protection against tyranny, precisely why they seek to disarm the populace. Without an armed citizenry, all that stands between us and totalitarianism is a "living, breathing" piece of paper. Leftists hate the Constitution.

BLACK WOMAN:
It really clarified things when the economy starts to you know go sour and I actually picked up a copy of Communist Manifesto and started reading what Marx said, that every ten years there's a boom and bust system, and it's like, "Oh okay, I get it!" You know like I read it before and didn't get it, it didn't apply, you know? And now that I read it again it applies! It's like, "Oh okay, I get it!" You know, I think.

Also, some of you have gone around suggesting that, we've held all this protesting; it doesn't seem as though the administration is listening. So you know, why don't we just pick a day where everybody just withdraws their money from banks, just massively just go up to their money, go to banks, get their money out, and hold it for a weekend?

You know, that's something that we can do, you know? People can do, they can do it quietly so they don't have to go to a protest or anything you know, just do it. And you know, just don't buy anything for a few hours, and say, say you know, "We've against this administration, so why should we contribute, you know, to the economy of this country?"

It's amazing to see people who have gone all the way into this leftist religion, and you see the results. They plot and plan and scheme of ways to destroy America. And if you think this is just a lunatic fringe, go to any elite university, and the professors teaching our kids aren't any different. They're just smarter at couching their sick creed in more intellectual and subtle ways, but at its core, it's no different than what this woman is advocating. I'll bet her professors are proud of her.

ARAB WOMAN:
This country was founded on violence. This country has been doing this since it began and I think that people need to understand that. We should really put that book on the website, if you want the truth of what happened read this book.

Well if you hate this country so much, why don't you get the hell out? Go back to the Islamic world and throw a burka on and have no rights. That's what you want, go live there and leave us alone. Our country will be a better place without you.

BRIAN:
. . . issues so people are not voting about Iraq, the Iraq war, which is an alternative to what Congress did, but the affirmative thing that says we want this, this, this, and this. We want money for jobs, education, and housing; not for war, not for wars of aggression, and do you feel that way?

Because it's not going to be in the debates, it's not going to be in the primaries, it's not going to be explicit, it's not going to be on the ballot, it may be too late to even get it in referendum form except in some areas, but we can do an independent campaign and possibly get millions of people to sign this and then we can go to candidate forums and other things that where people can potentially join the debate, and go on and say, this is the missing voice, and that's an idea, something like that.

So we have demonstrations in New York, L.A., San Francisco, it may be too late for other cities that haven't already planned something but in general I mean, are people feeling all right with this as something we should be doing to stop the war?

[Rumblings of agreement]

Okay now, just a mention of September 27th. It looks like the Arab world is calling coordinated demonstrations at the anniversary of the beginning of the Intifada with the third and second Intifada that started a few years ago in Palestine; the uprising to evict Israel from the West Bank and Gaza, the occupied territories. The idea is, I've already talked with the European movement, they may be proclaiming September 27th as a day for their coordinated actions as well; so if it works out we might be able to have another global date.

I guess six million Jews being exterminated in concentration camps this century isn't enough for this guy, he wants the job finished this time. Israel is the only beacon of liberty and morality in that whole benighted region, and we have scum like Brian working full-time to destroy it. He'll get his, if not in this world, the next one.

It may not be the same numbers, maybe it will, maybe it won't, but the focus this time would be solidarity with all of those who are resisting occupation, from Iraq, Palestine, the Philippines, if the Philippines is reinvaded, and as Joe said in his remarks yesterday, they're turning the whole Philippines into a base.

No, we're sending U.S. military advisors to work with the Philippine military to help them combat the Islamic terrorist groups that are plaguing the Filipino people as they seek to turn yet another country into a Wahhabi Islamic wasteland of repression and violence.

And Cuba, Cuba is an occupied country, even though they had the revolution in '59, the naval base, the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo occupies a huge section of Cuba and the U.S. won't leave and that's where they built all the prisons.

Cuba an occupied country? This has to be the most asinine statement of this entire conference, it just shows what happens when you see the world through red-colored glasses.

Cuba: 110,860 sq km
Guantanamo Bay: 29 sq km

Guantanamo Bay is a tiny portion of the island, the rest of it 100% controlled by that despot Castro. But if the Cuban people are living in a totalitarian police state, mired in poverty, with every neighbor spying on each other, it has to be America's fault. And before you blame the trade sanctions, Cuba can trade with every country on the planet except the U.S., so much for that excuse. Funny, I thought corporations called the shots, so it's strange we're sacrificing trade so we can take a moral stance against tyranny. I guess Chomsky never considered that.

And Cuba is one of the most racist societies on the planet. A state of apartheid exists, where the black populace is completely shut out of the cushy Party jobs and the entire tourism industry. As such, Cuban blacks make up a disproportionate share of freedom fighters and Castro is regularly executing blacks in his socialist utopia. Where's ANSWER's condemnation? Where's Amnesty International? Where's the U.N. with war crimes subpoenas?

Oh yeah I forgot, that doesn't fit their hate America paradigm.

It's trying to show that there is an empire, there is resistance to the empire, and that the people of the United States are not the beneficiaries of empire. We're standing with those who stand true against it.

There is an empire, an evil empire of statists and freedom-haters like you who want a one world socialist U.N. led nightmare. There is only one thing standing in your way: the constitutional Republic of the United States of America. That's why you were really against this whole Iraq war. If the Iraqi people are introduced to freedom, they just might get to like it, and that wouldn't be good for the cause. You people are sick, really really sick.

CLOSING PLENARY

Next I'd like to introduce Richard Becker. Richard Becker is the co-director of the San Francisco office for the International Action Center.

[Applause - Standing Ovation.]

RICHARD:
Thank you. I would just like to talk a little about the lessons of the last year. You know as soon as the Iraq war fighting ended, the main fighting, the lessons of Iraq began to be issued.

John Bolton, the quote unquote Under Secretary of State for Disarmament, who is truly a fascist maniac, said "North Korea, Syria and Iran should learn the lessons of Iraq." And the next day the Israeli Defense Minister said, "The Palestinians should learn the lessons of Iraq." And the day after that, the U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic said that "Cuba should learn the lessons of Iraq."

And what exactly are the lessons that they are talking about here?

The lessons, Dick, are that if you want to have a suicidal police state where you live under repression and starvation, that's your choice. But if your psychopath Leader starts trying to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, either for himself or to sell on the black market, we, the free people of this world, have the moral right and duty to stop you. We are not going to sit back and let you create nuclear holocausts. We are not going to let you destroy our way of life and kill us by the tens of millions. That's the lesson. And along the way if we can liberate people from tyranny, all the better.

I mean we should look at that. They're saying, "If you don't do what we want you to do, then we'll do to you what we did to Iraq. We'll destroy your country, we'll bomb your people, we'll impose sanctions, blockades, starvation."

I think that's called a terrorist threat.

[Wild Applause.]

VIDEO

Images of people and stock footage of nuclear and missile tests, intermixed with pictures of President Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Kim Jong Ill and Stalin as a nuclear warning siren runs in the background, words flash across the screen quickly. A woman screaming starts up, words such as, "Pre-Emptive" and "These People" flash across the screen, more pictures of Islamic terrorists intercut with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Wolfowitz. A short segment of them accosting some Congressman about nuclear testing and atomic weapons.

[Wild Applause]

I felt like I was in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange watching this Communist art. These people are seriously creepy.

FEMALE A.N.S.W.E.R OFFICIAL:
See you in Omaha!

She's talking about some march they're planning August 1 in Omaha to protest the U.S. STRATCOM nuclear weapons facility. You know what? I hate nuclear weapons too, but I know the only way we can get rid of them is when we have a world of free nations, or decent nations, of nations rid of socialist scum like A.N.S.W.E.R.

RICHARD BRECKER:
Thank you very much to everyone for coming! On to July 4th! On to September 27th! Stop the war! End the Colonial occupation from Iraq to Palestine! Thank you! This conference is closed."